Zachary Bloom

Chief Technology Officer at Freedom Forever

Temecula, California, United States

About Zachary Bloom

Zachary Bloom is Chief Technology Officer at Freedom Forever. Location: Temecula, California, United States.

I've spent eight years at Freedom Forever, starting as a web developer and working my way to CTO. The path matters less than what it taught me: how to make decisions with incomplete information, how to connect technology to business outcomes, and how to build teams that actually want to win. Technology investments only matter if they move the business. Every major platform we've built was framed around that. What does this cost to build versus buy? What's the operational drag if we don't? What's the EBITDA impact at scale? Those questions drive our roadmap as much as any technical consideration. When we replaced Podio and spreadsheets with a purpose-built CRM, the pitch to the business wasn't about clean data. It was about eliminating the manual overhead bleeding margin out of every project. I put a lot of energy into the people side. Hiring well, setting clear expectations, and making sure the team understands why their work matters. A motivated engineering team with mediocre tools will outperform an unmotivated one with great tools every time. Building that culture intentionally is as important to me as any architecture decision. On risk, I've gotten comfortable making the call and owning it. Whether that's a build versus buy decision on a core system, a bet on AI tooling before the rest of the industry caught up, or a reorg that will either accelerate delivery or blow up morale if handled wrong. The results back it up. Our AI work cut call center costs by roughly 90%, reduced permit processing to mostly automated, and has been featured by both Anthropic and ElevenLabs. None of that happened because the technology was clever. It happened because we made the right bets at the right time and executed.

Skills

  • Agile Project Management
  • React
  • PHP

Additional experience

  • Vice President of Software Engineering

    Freedom Forever

    May 2021 – December 2022

Education

  • Bachelor of Science (B.S.), California State University, Chico